In the current state of the art, applications allowing the submission of user generated content are a valuable source of information, collaboration and entertainment. The transformation of the Internet from a static “one way street” to a global, multi-lane highway has allowed users to interact more freely and to increase the capabilities of the network. Among the features relevant to users are rankings and ratings of user submitted content, or “user-generated content”. Often, users can quickly scan lists of content and determine the quality of the content by viewing a rating such as an integer value or graphical indicators (e.g., star counts).
Conversely, the advent of user-generated content communities has inherently enabled various negative behaviors that mar the functionality of such communities. Users submitting content may maliciously or unintentionally submit content that does not conform to the standards of a given community. For example, a community wishing to promote urbane postings may frown upon the use of vulgar language, all capital letters, blatantly incoherent language or grammatically incorrect language. Users may violate this rule through “spamming” (i.e., intentionally acting in an inappropriate matter for a commercial or offensive purpose) or unintentionally violating the community standards (e.g., typing an offensive message in the heat of an argument).
One solution utilized in the current state of the art is that of a “reputation score” or “initial score” in an attempt to remedy the effects of inappropriate content. This solution assigns a given user an initial ranking (e.g., a number of stars) that indicates the user has a favorable reputation among the members of the community. This ranking may be generated on the basis of a number of factors, such as the average ranking of the user's previous content. This solution, while an improvement, suffers from multiple deficiencies.
For example, as a user participates in the community, his or her reputation tends to remain static around his or her average ranking. Accordingly, because the overall ranking for a given user may change slowly over time, the reputation score associated with her or her posts may appear to be unchanging regardless of content. Because of this, the user may never fully be aware that the community frowns upon the content he or she posted. In an extreme alternative, a user may spend a considerable amount of time accumulating good reputation in a given context and subsequently expend the existing goodwill on a small number of transgressive acts.
Thus there is currently a need in the art for systems and methods of enhancing the quality of user generated content through intelligent ranking of messages prior to submission. Furthermore, there currently exists a need in the art to allow users to know the quality of their content before submitting and to allow them to rectify deficiencies.